All Our Friends
by songsingsitself
Summary: A series of Marauders-era drabbles that take place in a modern-day American high school. In our latest episode, Snape learns a fun lesson about babies and being social.
1. Test Review

Locker 627 slammed, the sound muffled by a falling Chemistry book. "Shoot." The keeper of the locker and the book quickly tried to kick it shut, but the book still stuck halfway out of the locker.

A pair of black ballet flats skidded across the wet floor as they raced down the hallway. _We really need more than five minutes in between classes,_ their owner thought irritably. _If we're expected to go to the bathroom AND go to our lockers, where is the time? I mean, for boys, it only takes a minute to pee, but for girls it takes all of the five minutes, even if you aren't on your period!_

A small man with a wheezy little voice tried to gain the attention of twenty-four yappy teenagers. "Good morning, class!"

A trip, a groan, and then a giggle. "Padfoot, you idiot!"

Rain steadily pounded with the girl's feet as she ran, then tiptoed past Ms. McGonnagall's room. She was not interested in a detention today. She tried to whistle casually, but it was difficult to do as there was no oxygen in her lungs.

"Now, really! A little rain is not going to get in the way of our test review!" By the groans that erupted, one would think that the students didn't expect to do anything when they dragged themselves to school today.

"Mr. Potter! Mr. Black!" The boys had forgotten to tiptoe. "Detention with me, 7:00 tomorrow morning!"

"Yes, ma'am," the politer of the two replied more out of habit than out of actual politeness, not bothering to turn around.

Willa North rushed into the World History classroom, hopped over feet in the aisles and apologized profusely to Mr. Flitwick. "Sorry, sorry, sorry," she added as she edged around some more laid-back members of the class, trying not to step over the books that they had not cared to place under their desks.

"It's quite all right, Miss North," Flitwick replied kindly, glancing about his classroom before tapping a few buttons on his keyboard and looking up at the projector screen."Now what about-"

It doesn't happen often, but occasionally there are instances in life that seem like they are straight out of a movie, like when at the exact moment Flitwick notices two empty desks at the back of the room, James Potter and Sirius Black come thundering in.

Flitwick sighed as the boys did not bother to make an excuse for their tardiness. James was trying not to run his fingers through his hair too purposely, and Sirius was texting under his desk. "Late again," Flitwick said more to himself than to them, then turned on his screen. He sighed, trying to prepare himself. "This...is...JEOPARDY!" He announced, trying to be enthusiastic as the theme music played jubilantly.

No response.

Flitwick sighed. He really wanted them to do well on this test. He tried to think about what motivated the students. Times have changed and extra credit points aren't desirable anymore, but he tried anyway. "The winning team gets extra credit!"

No response.

"Candy?" Some interested faces, but not effective either.

"You know what we want!" Frank Longbottom called from the back of the room. A few students backed him up with cheers and pleads. Flitwick rolled his eyes and sighed, thinking for a moment.

"Okay, fine. If everybody participates, then we can watch Mulan after the test." He covers his ears as the room erupts in cheers, and he wonders how watching this historically inaccurate children's film will motivate the high school students, and from then on reminds himself every few minutes that he can't let them see him type in his Netflix password.

 _Meanwhile, down the hall..._

"Lupin." Someone throws a precious stick of gum at the back of his head.

"Pssssst. _Lupin."_

"What?" he mutters without even turning around. Ms. Trelawney is in one of her long speeches about Shakespeare and all the words that wouldn't exist without him, and Remus knows that if she is uninterrupted, then she will carry on like this for the rest of the hour, and he can daydream in peace.

"You have to be on our team for Jeopardy!"

Remus pauses, the corners of his mouth twitching. "Is that how you ask?"

"Pleeeeease?"

Remus pauses again, knowing the suspense will kill her, biting back a laugh. "No."

"LUPIN!" Elloise's foot flies into the aisle and swiftly kicked his chair. "We need you! You're the only one who has actually READ any of the books!"

"Well, isn't that a shame," Lupin observes out of the corner of his mouth, sinking lower and lower in his chair.

"Please, Remus?" a soft voice pleads behind him.

Remus smiles in spite of himself, and sinks down a little farther so he can tip his head back and rest it on her stack of books and folders. Jacquelyn Dearborn smiles down at him, gently poking him on the nose with her pen. "Jac, you love to read. How could you not have read any of the books?"

She quirked her mouth to the side, something he loves, particularly because her brown eyes crinkle up when she does it. "I hated Catch-22," she confided in a whisper. "I don't get that kind of humor. And Heart of Darkness was just so..."

"Dark?" he offered with a chuckle. Jac nodded, hiding her smile behind her hand. Remus glanced at her friend, who was staring at him and tapping her foot impatiently. "Why does she want to win so bad?"

"It's the candy," Jac replied, shaking her head. "We didn't have time for a McDonald's run this morning, so she hasn't got her caffeine in her yet. It's going to be a rough day if she doesn't find a replacement."

Remus covered his mouth in mock shock. "But...but that means that you didn't get your morning hashbrown," he teased. "How ever will you survive without it?"

Jac shrugged, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. "Well, the candy would be an acceptable replacement."

Remus sighed. He knew he couldn't say no to her, and a selfish part of him hoped that maybe this would help her to see him in a more...boyfriend kind of light? His heart fluttered at the thought of being able to hold her hand, and tell her how beautiful she is without it being weird or creepy. He even thought of some dates he could take her on. The orchard had apple picking for a few more weeks, and maybe they could make a pie or some applesauce. Pumpkin season was coming soon, too. There was no end to what they could do in the fall, his favorite season.

"Lupin," Elloise hissed. "LUPIN." Her insistence broke him out of his little daydream. "So, will you be on our team or not?"

Remus glanced at Jac's hopeful eyes. "Sure."

"Yes!" Elloise didn't even bother to whisper, breaking Trelawney out of her tirade.


	2. Freaking Crock Pots

Lily Evans was about to crack her head open on her desk, right in the middle of Basic Econ. The basketball coach had spent the last hour talking about the ingenuity of crock pots, and she didn't know how much longer she could bear it.

"Corn...will it crock pot?" Mr. Wood asked the class, holding up a giant index card with a picture of corn and a question mark. There was a pause, then the several students who thought so raised their hands. The teacher flipped it over and yelled, "The answer is YES, it WILL crock pot!"

"How is this a quiz?" Lily muttered to her best friend, Mary McDonald.

The merry blonde girl shrugged as she clapped. "I dunno, but it beats doing actual work!"

"What about...fried chicken? Will it crock pot?" The class seemed equally divided on that one. "The answer is actually YES! It will crock pot! Aren't crock pots amazing?"

"Sure are, Mr. Wood!" James Potter called from the back of the room.

"All right, now here's a tricky one..." Mr. Wood paced back and forth at the front of his classroom. "Now...cupcakes. Will _they_ crock pot?"

"NO!" Lily yelled, standing up.

Mr. Wood stopped in his tracks, looking curiously at her. "Miss Evans, this is a quiz, we went over the expectations at the beginning-"

"Cupcakes...do not...crock pot! This is ridiculous! How is this basic economy in any sense of the term? I actually want to pass the midterm!"

"Evans, Evans." James hurried to the front of the room and put his arm around her. "Hey...I know you're upset, but Mr. Wood is actually sharing some very important information with us."

"How would you know? We all know that you and Sirius are just watching game film in the back of the room!" Lily snapped, thrusting an arm to James' comrade. Sirius's head was down, his dark, shiny hair falling in front of his face as his eyes were glued to the screen of his cell phone. When the room went quiet, his head snapped up.

"Uh," was all he had to say for himself.

"You know, while we're talking about ingenuity...I think we should talk about mine and Sirius' ingenuity." Lily shoved James' arm off from around her shoulders. "I mean, we're not only watching game film and talking about how we could be better basketball players...but we are also listening to Mr. Wood, who is telling us how we can be better _consumers."_

Lily blinked.

"I mean, I don't know about you, Lily, but I see myself married someday," James began, smiling grandly at her, despite the disgusted look on her face. "I want to know how best to cook and provide for my family. I want to be intentional with my time, so maybe while my crock pot dinner is cooking, I can do other things, like...like..."

"Like braiding your daughter's hair!" Sirius suggested.

James clapped his hands and pointed at his friend. "YES. _Like braiding my daughter's hair._ Also, I can do things like playing catch with my son in the backyard. Throwing the Frisbee with the dog." He glanced in what he thought was a subtle way in Lily's direction. "Helping my smart, beautiful wife with her homework when she goes back to school to get her master's degree-"

"James, I am sure you will make a wonderful father and husband someday, but is there a point to this?" Mr. Wood wondered, his next quiz photo depicting an ice cream cone hanging by the tips of his fingers.

"The POINT is, that I just want Lily to know that this is a great lesson, that will help me...and ALL of us...become better adults one day." James winked at her, turned on his heel, and walked back to his seat.

Lily's face was as red as her hair.

"DOES THE SCHOOL BOARD KNOW THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE TEACHING US?"

A few seconds later, they heard a knock at the door, and a lanky, elderly man poked his head inside. "Good morning. I thought I heard someone shouting?"

Mr. Wood blushed. "Yes, Mr. Dumbledore, Lily is just not very appreciative of my crock pot lesson."

"Ohhhh, the crock pot lesson? Carry on, carry on!" Mr. Dumbledore encouraged, tiptoeing in front of him and taking the seat behind Lily. Mr. Wood sighed and asked his next quiz question. Dumbledore tapped Lily on the shoulder, and when she turned to face him, she saw his blue eyes dancing behind their grandpa glasses.

"You don't appreciate this lesson, Lily?" Lily took a deep breath, and Dumbledore could tell if he didn't stop her right away, she would be going on for hours. "I know this seems ridiculous, but it's something he does every year. He's very passionate, as you can tell."

"But we aren't learning anything," Lily protested.

"Of course you aren't!" Dumbledore agreed, making her even more confused. "This class is about the economic system in America! We are an incredibly ridiculous country, my dear, and it's very frustrating, especially if your job is to teach the nonsense to high school students. Let your teacher have a little fun with it once and a while." Lily tapped her thumb against her temple. "And he's not wrong, you know. Crock pots are very useful, and the sooner you learn that, the better."

For some time, Lily's green eyes tried to once again meet her principal's, hoping to continue the conversation, but the blue eyes behind tired, wrinkled lids were now focused on the question at hand: "Pizza...will it crock pot?"


	3. Maybe Baby

Willa promised herself that very day that she would wait until marriage to have a baby, because the stress of having one on top of trying to live a real life was just too much for her to bear. And she wasn't going to take any chances.

The baby she was in charge of was actually very cute. His skin was tan, and his gently curled black hair fell down in front of his forehead. His name was Tiago, which was the name of one of her friend's Brazilian cousins that she had heard once in a story and it had just stuck to her brain.

The past few days of Tiago being in her care, he had been a good baby-as soon as he was fed or had his diaper changed, he immediately started cooing or fell asleep. He was the darling of everyone they came upon, and his favorite place to sleep was in the back of her Physical Science class-

Oh. It should be mentioned that Willa had to take Tiago to school with her every day.

That she carried him around in his car seat, along with diapers, a bottle, and a blanket, as well as her textbooks and water bottle. Willa's mom told her that particular experience, not having enough hands for everything, was a very important skill that would do well to be mastered before motherhood. You can't just take the stroller everywhere, and even if you could, they don't make enough darn pockets for those things.

And that Tiago was going to be in her care for a full week, and it would have been longer if she had chosen to have him over the weekend.

It should also be noted that Tiago was a fake baby for Willa's Parenting class, but he was incredibly lifelike.

Tiago was the whole reason that Willa had decided to take Parenting over Mythology or Women's Chorus. She had seen other students responsible for fake babies, and the whole assignment had sounded very fun to her. Willa didn't like to admit it to herself, but sometimes, it was fun to have attention, especially if it wasn't on something she directly said or did. People who had never even talked to her before wanted to now so they could hold her fake baby. The whole thing was pretty weird, but she tried not to think too much into it. Especially when her mom kept calling Tiago her "grandson" while on the phone with her friends.

The first few days had been fun. Willa had taken Tiago to the soccer game with her, to the grocery store, and her mom had taken care of him while she was in the shower. He had even slept through the night! However the night before had been a different story, when whatever she tried, whether it was feeding him, putting him down to sleep, or changing his diaper-he wouldn't stop crying. Willa slept on her hard bedroom floor that night so she wouldn't have to keep getting in and out of bed, and at one point had cried herself to sleep. She was one of those people who can't survive off of less than eight hours of sleep. She gets pretty cranky.

"Just like a real baby," her mother told her as she groaned all the way down the stairs.

It had happened again, just before second hour. Willa had rocked him for ten minutes, and it seemed like he was sleeping-the fake babies did weird things like breathe and sigh and snore, ugh, it was so creepy-and he had settled down enough for her to drop him in his carrier and hurry him to US History.

The sub that day was Mrs. Hall, an incredibly old woman who Willa didn't think should be allowed to leave the house, let alone supervise children-and she was delighted upon seeing Willa walk in. "Oh my goodness, what a beautiful baby!" Willa didn't have the heart to tell the woman that Tiago was plastic.

"Thank you," the girl yawned, making her way to the back row.

"How old is he?" The woman crowed, watching him with glee as Willa sat him down in the aisle next to her seat.

"Not old enough!" she moaned, flopping onto her desk chair. The old woman giggled.

"Oh, the time flies, darling. It really does. Wait til your little boy has his own baby..." Mrs. Hall droned on and on about her son who lived in a picturesque part of Ohio (which Willa was sure didn't exist) and didn't stop until someone asked in a loud, pointed voice if the class was going to watch a movie that day.

Their teacher Mr. Binns usually left movies for them on sub day, and this particular one was about Prohibition. Those teachers who just leave movies as their lesson plans are great, except for ones like Binns, who require you to fill out a fill-in-the-blank worksheet to make sure you actually watched it and not just played on your phone the whole time. The worst thing about it was that Binns preferred this history video company that had the worst narrator ever, whose voice sounded simultaneously like nails on a chalkboard and the murmur of a broken car.

A young man named Severus Snape was Willa's seat buddy. He was one of those students that usually was able to blend into the background, no matter what he did. His clothes were old and faded, and his hair usually fell in a curtain in front of his face. The only thing that really stuck out about him was his rather prominent nose. The boy was incredibly smart; he didn't want to make a big show of it, so he didn't offer answers when the teacher called, but he worked as hard as he could on every test and project. He didn't know who he was trying to prove it to, but whoever it was needed to know that he wasn't to be ignored.

Ten minutes into the movie, young Severus looked up from writing the word "moonshine" on his paper to quiet, restless noises from inside the car seat.

He grimaced at the glorified baby doll.

After a few minutes, the baby started to whine a little louder. Severus narrowed his eyes at the thing's unnaturalness and glanced at the quiet blonde girl he had never before paid any mind to. She was conked out across her desk, her long, slender arm hanging off the side, her black and white sweater pulled up at the arm to show her pink and gold watch.

Severus wrinkled his nose. He really didn't want to wake her up. He didn't know her that well, and that was no one's fault but his own. The girl had tried making conversation on a number of occasions, but he had pointedly ignored her or given her a few word answer. How could he have done that to her? It wasn't like people were lining up to be his friend, or ask him questions about his life, even within his own family.

Because of this, he couldn't wake her up. He also didn't want to be awkward-how do you even wake up a stranger? But he also didn't want the baby to keep annoying him.

Before he even thought about what he was doing, he stuck out his tattered sneaker, touched the edge of the car seat, and began to slowly rock it back and forth. He didn't know a lot about babies, and he knew even less about these fake babies, but he had seen a lady on the train do this once, and the movement had seemed to help her baby fall asleep.

Willa's baby was not crazy about it at first; for a few moments, it cried even louder, but slowly, the noises stopped. Severus didn't want the baby to cry again, of course, so he thought he would keep rocking. Not because he was doing a favor to Willa, he didn't care about her, of course. He just wanted some peace. By the end of the hour, his foot was beginning to get sore. Severus never thought of himself as becoming a father someday, but with a glimmer of pride, he thought about how he had a skill to offer to his potential parenting partner-rocking their child to sleep in the most noncommittal way possible.

At the end of the hour, when Mrs. Hall abruptly clicked on the lights, Willa sat up, a long spiral mark running down from the corner of her left eye to her cheek, and wondered where she was. She glanced over at quiet Tiago in his car seat and smiled gratefully at him. "What a good boy, you let Mama sleep for a while!" she cooed, nudging the car seat with her own foot, this one decorated in a pair of those flat shoes Severus had seen girls wear, only hers were bright pink.

Severus Snape didn't care enough about her approval to tell her that it all had been his doing, that he had taken care of the thing, but it would have been nice for her to see him not just as the creepy, standoffish guy who sat next to her. He almost thought about telling her, but maybe it didn't matter what she thought. As the bell rang, he smiled at her, which took her off guard, as he had never done that before. She thought he was just being nice, but it was actually because her curly blond hair had gone completely flat on the side that she slept on it, and she didn't learn about that problem until lunchtime.


End file.
